Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has threatened to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the UN agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of Covid-19 throughout the region.
A new Brazilian record for daily Covid-19 deaths pushed the county's death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Mr Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.
Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.